Now open at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, the Arts Council Collection presents Found Cities, Lost Objects: Women in the City, a national touring exhibition curated by Turner Prize-winning artist and cultural activist Lubaina Himid CBE, which explores modern city life from a female perspective.

Exploring shared female experiences of urban life, this exhibition considers the privileges enjoyed and boundaries faced by women in the modern city. On display from 14 May to 4 September 2022, in the Gas Hall at BMAG, this large exhibition of over 60 works presents a wide array of modern and contemporary art, including painting, sculpture, photography and film from both the Arts Council Collection and Birmingham’s collection.

From the Arts Council Collection, susan pui san lok’s film Trailers (RoCH fans and Legends) overlaps the everyday mundanity of the traditional British high street seen through Google Street View with film clips of martial arts film sequences, speaking to the poetics of diasporic communities where place-making can be both banal and dramatic.

Getting lost in a crowd to observe the hustle and bustle of city life has long inspired artists. French artist Sophie Calle’s embroidered tie recalls a humorous story where she dresses a man from afar, sending him gifts in the post as she becomes the female flâneur roaming the city and assuming the role of observer.

The important work of female documentary photographers such as Margaret Murray and Markéta Luskačová, in capturing the life of the city from a female gaze, provides a key perspective on society not always found in mainstream channels. Artists such as Young In Hong and Magda Stawarska-Beavan historicise key global events, speaking to our relationship with history, specifically where it is evident in cities and where it has been masked.

Maps are key to our understanding of space helping us to navigate from place to place. Inspired by artist and founder of the A-Z Geographer’s Company, Phyllis Pearsall this exhibition looks at the aesthetic qualities of maps as a perfect combination of useful and exquisite design. Using part of a heated meteorite found in Namibia in 1836 to burn an A-Z map, Cornelia Parker imagines a series of apocalyptic events which destabilise a familiar environment.

The exhibition also highlights works which reimagine and question what a city designed for and by women might look like. Tai Shani’s performance work, Dark Continent: Semiramis, builds a metaphorical protected city for women, using examples of important contributions women have made to Western civilisation and arguments that prove their intellectual and moral equality with men. Expanding on these themes, Found Cities, Lost Objects encourages conversations between audiences and artists, exchanging observations, memories and imaginings to give us all a greater sense of ownership and belonging.

Additional works from eight artists in Birmingham’s collection of modern and contemporary art continue to explore the themes of the exhibition, including a large-scale installation, Expressive Deviant Phonology, by Birmingham-born contemporary street artist Lucy McLauchlan. McLauchlan’s monochrome urban artworks will be recognisable to many past visitors to Birmingham as her depiction of three birds once graced the concrete-clad Birmingham Central Library before it was demolished.

Found Cities, Lost Objects: Women in the City shows at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery until 4 September. For more information, visit: birminghammuseums.org.uk/bmag